How To Fix Ansi Encodeing In Notepad On Windows 7

By: John Sparks

Glasses in front of computer code

The Information technology & Network Systems (IT NS) department at Laurus College utilizes a hands-on learning approach to our course instruction with plenty of lab time in our classes.

During one such course, we re-discovered an result in the Windows Notepad application.

The Bug

Windows Notepad has been around for over 30 years now and has been the default text editor for many users. Many years ago, an issue was discovered wherein typing certain text patterns in Notepad, and then upon saving, endmost, and re-opening, would generate a set of boxes or a foreign text pattern (Google search "bush-league hid the facts" for more than data).

The issue was patently fixed with the release of Windows Vista and there hasn't been much chatter on the issue since.

During the IT form however, it was discovered that the event can be recreated utilizing sure text strings, including the proper noun of the instructor, even on today's Windows 10 Notepad. Inbound the string, saving, and reopening the file confuses Notepad as to which encoding method to utilise while opening the file. Notepad takes a "best approximate" arroyo, and in this case, gets it wrong.

Try it yourself:

From your Windows search bar, blazon Notepad to launch notepad. Then type the following string: johnsparks
Next, highlight the text and copy it to the clipboard (Edit > Copy)
Now, paste the string 20 times into Notepad (Edit > Paste)
Adjacent, save the file (File > Save) with whatever proper name y'all like, and close Notepad
Finally, reopen the new text file and discover the results. You should see something similar to the screenshot below.

Text pasted into notepad

This behavior occurs due to an issue with how Notepad interprets the encoding of the text file when it opens information technology up. Files by default, are encoded in Notepad with either ANSI or UTF-8 (depending on the Notepad version). ANSI encoding more often than not is used for the Latin character gear up (including the English alphabet), and UTF-8 supports the Unicode character gear up (a global character set). When Notepad opens this certificate it doesn't interpret the encoding properly.

The Workaround

To work around this outcome, one pick is to modify the encoding to UTF-8 with BOM when you lot save the file. BOM stands for Byte Order Mark, which creates a hexadecimal entry EF BB BF along with the file as shown in the screenshot beneath. When the file is adjacent opened, Notepad recognizes the BOM and so understands the proper encoding to use to display the right text.

BOM Example

Can you find other text strings to indistinguishable this event in Notepad?

Want to Larn More?

Come join our IT NS program for your own opportunity to acquire more most Windows Operating Systems and Applications.

Starting time your journey TODAY!

References:

Hoffman, Chris. "Notepad Isn't Moving to Windows 10's Shop After All." How, How-To Geek, 4 Dec. 2019, www.howtogeek.com/450169/notepad-isnt-moving-to-windows-10s-store-after-all/. Retrieved 12/4/19

"How Windows Notepad Interpret Characters." Stack Overflow, 20 July 2011, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6769311/how-windows-notepad-interpret-characters Retrieved 12/v/19

Raymond, Raymond ChenFollow. "The Notepad File Encoding Problem, Redux." The Old New Matter, 17 Apr. 2007, https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070417-00/?p=27223 Retrieved 12/half dozen/19

Karl-Bridge-Microsoft. "Unicode – Win32 Apps." Win32 Apps | Microsoft Docs, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-the states/windows/win32/intl/unicode?redirectedfrom=MSDN Retrieved 12/6/19

"Bush Hid the Facts." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Aug. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_hid_the_facts Retrieved 12/3/19

"What's the Difference between UTF-8 and UTF-8 without BOM?" Stack Overflow, 1 Mar. 1960, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2223882/whats-the-difference-between-utf-8-and-utf-viii-without-bom Retrieved 12/x/xix